Keeping players immersed

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the implementation of a new user interface in The Long Dark that improves the game’s immersion.

Keeping players constantly immersed in a computer game is one of the biggest goals in game development. A constant immersion can only be achieved if the gameplay results in a continuous flow that is rarely disrupted as a disruption will negatively influence or even break the immersion in most of the cases.

However, players need to be informed about important values and, dependent on the type of the game, need to have a means to select different tools allowing them to interact with the game world in order to successfully play the game. Communicating those critical information to the players is mostly done via the user interface (UI) which ultimately displays all the relevant values and choices. Therefore, one of the most critical elements of keeping players immersed in a game is the design of the UI.

Hence, the main goal of the UI design is to provide the players with all relevant information without distracting them from the game world. This is especially critical for computer games that provide a first-person perspective which gives players the actual feeling of being a part of the game world. The immersion of such a game would immediately break or be reduced, if a player suddenly sees a static screen or a static display of information in a vivid virtual environment. Therefore, the main challenge in UI design is to create an UI that provides all relevant information and is as transparent as possible to reduce its distracting effect.

The Long Dark

A great example for a good UI design is the survival game The Long Dark (TLD). In TLD, the player is lost in the Northern Canadian wilderness and has to survive in this harsh and cold environment by searching for valuable resources that will help the player to stay alive. As the game realistically simulates the fight for survival, the player must be informed about critical values such as the own body temperature, the calories stored and the apparent air temperature. With the release of version v.321, TLD received a new UI that informs the players about all the relevant information without compromising too much the immersive experience of TLD.

The Long Dark – Status Screen

Previously, the player’s only option to access those important information was to open a static overview screen that immediately broke the player’s immersion. Additionally, the same static screen had to be accessed in order to carry out certain interactions with the game world such as crafting a basic camp or healing a wound.

The Long Dark – Improved Status Display

This was changed with the implementation of a new UI that allows the players to directly display all critical stats in the lower left corner of the first-person view without switching to a static screen. In addition, the information are not constantly displayed and will fade out after a couple of seconds removing any distraction from the player’s first-person perspective. A similar solution was found for the most important interactions which can now be accessed via a radial menu that is directly displayed in the center of the player’s view. This menu allows the player to carry out all relevant interactions without the need to switch to a static screen first. The only static screen that is left in the game is the inventory management. However, this is not really affecting the immersion as accessing the own backpack will also distract the player in the real world and thus works without breaking the immersion.

The Long Dark – Radial Menu

In the end, the new interface allows the players to access all relevant information without breaking the immersion of the game. Moreover, the player’s view is not compromised as the information are only displayed for a short amount of time.